Vallejo council greenlights new police station design despite rising costs

VALLEJO – The Vallejo City Council approved funding for a proposed design on a new police headquarters building, despite calling the long-awaited plan presented Tuesday a “disaster.”

The council expressed astonishment and frustration at already escalating costs and delays for a new headquarters for the Vallejo Police Department presented Tuesday, as the project overran its design estimate and required new funding to advance to a bid process. However, after hours of debate, the council voted 6-1, with Mayor Andrea Sorce opposed, to approve the city’s request for about $800,000 to finish and advance a design review process. 

That step is required to advance to a bid process, which would bring the cost of the design to about $1.5 million, according to City Attorney Veronica Nebb. The council in a separate motion voted to use funds from a recent settlement with Monsanto which brought the city $4.5 million to cover the design review process in full.

Since 2017, the city has been planning for a new police station to replace the current headquarters, built in 1961. Interim Public Works Director Oscar Alcantar said Tuesday that the existing building has multiple issues, including a failing HVAC system and asbestos contamination. 

The city purchased a building at 400 Mare Island Way for a new station in 2019. However, in 2022 the City Council directed the city to explore other sites and in 2023 voted to recommend a city-owned site at 111 Amador St. 

In 2020, the city awarded a contract to Indigo Hammond & Playle Architects LLP, to handle the project design. The site presented Tuesday proposes using about 89,700 square feet at the Amador Street site for the main station, a three-story building offering services like the dispatch call center, a training space, a temporary holding area and a community engagement room. If approved for construction, the project could total $121 million and take about 32 months to build. 

The councilmembers expressed dismay at spending nearly $800,000 to finish a full design review process. City Manager Andrey Murray said that most of the money would be to pay staff for the process, which he said was not accounted for in the original design scope and estimate. None of the original city staff who were on the project are with the city anymore, and the design review process was paused at 95% complete in May to await additional funds, he said.

Sorce said that the cost estimates used in previous years seemed “fabricated” without a real assessment of needs versus the budget, and called the city’s management of the project a “disaster.”

“I think we should set a very strict timeline and stick to it,” Sorce said. “We have a project management problem in this city and we need to put a person on this … ensuring that things are done in a timely manner in accordance with council giving direction."

Councilmember Tonia Lediju expressed concern about whether the city could accomplish the work given the ongoing staffing shortage in the planning and building departments. She demanded a study session on the project, given how much its status has changed.

“We are nowhere [near] where I would even vote on another dollar moving this project forward, without knowing who our team is to do the work,” Lediju said. 

Vice Mayor Peter Bregenzer asked why the council spent about a year asking for updates and now faces such a high bill. He suggested that the design eliminate certain buildings and make other cuts for prudence.

“This is a money grab,” Bregenzer said. “Everything the staff wants, they keep adding on to it. This is not how we do business. We have the same song over and over again and we never learn from it.”

Councilmember Alexander Matias agreed, saying that the project report reflects larger issues with the city’s management.

“This has been a colossal waste of taxpayer money from beginning to end,” Matias said. “It’s a very different force that we may have a few years from now, and are we really planning for the police that we will have?”

However, the council ultimately voted Tuesday to approve the requested funding and finish the design as proposed. Instead of a full study session, city staff will return with a presentation on options for temporary locations for the police during construction, as well as on different financing options to explore potential federal funds for police stations. The police may, during a future construction process, relocate to city-owned temporary sites at 1 Harbor Way, the northern side of the parking lot by 400 Mare Island Way or an empty lot at Curtola Parkway and Mono Street.

Murray said he took full responsibility for oversight of the project management in recent years, and agreed that more conversations may be needed to “recalibrate the project.”

“It’s not that the design expenses have escalated,” he said. “It’s that in some respects, the original scope of the design work was not complete.”

Resident Anne Carr, in public comment, criticized the design of the main building, calling it larger than what the feasibility study reflected and more expensive than originally estimated.

“We keep having, project after project, all these overruns, and I don’t see where that money comes from,” Carr said. “I would like to see discipline around budgets at some point.”